Soybean
Also called: Soyabean · Topic: Major Crops of India: Distribution and Conditions · NCERT: Class 12, Ch 3 "Land Resources and Agriculture"
Meaning
Soybean is an oilseed and a protein-rich crop. It is grown in the kharif season, mostly on the black soils of central India. It spread fast across Malwa in the 1970s and 1980s. Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra together grew about 90% of India's soybean (NCERT; verify current). After the oil is pressed out, the leftover soybean meal is fed to animals and poultry. This meal is a major Indian feed export.
Example
The Malwa plateau of western Madhya Pradesh, around Indore and Ujjain, is India's main soybean belt. Because of this, Madhya Pradesh is often called the "soya state".
Don't confuse with
- Groundnut: this is also a kharif oilseed, but it is led by Gujarat and grown on drylands in the west and south. Soybean belongs to the black-soil Malwa and Maharashtra belt.